Identifying Your Sticking Points

I'm going to add something here, that you should do every single month, at least, maybe every week.

I still get value from this exercise, and it takes very little time. However, just knowing this exercise won't help, ya have to actually DO IT.

Take one piece of A4. At the top write "I see a hot girl". At the bottom write: "We start having sex" (or "she says 'I do'", or whatever your actual outcome is).

Then fill in a plausible and detailed explanation of how you got from seeing this chick to being balls deep. Whenever you get to a point where you're not sure what to write, you've found a sticking point.

For the VAST majority of community guys I've met, this will be:

"I see a hot girl. I go and run some opinion opener from the internet on her. Then, uh.. um. Maybe I neg her? Uh, and, uh."

BANG. Sticking point identified. Do some research at this point. What comes next? Post a question to the forum. Ask someone what should happen next.

You don't need to work out the best thing to say - you're not looking for lines to memorize, and you're not looking for some kind of magical routine - it'll never go down the way you've planned it anyway. You're looking for an understanding of a plausible next step. Don't accept answers like "Then you be an alpha male and she fucks you" - not good enough. Ask for specific sample dialogue. Don't try and replicate those, don't try and parrot that shit off, but use them to get an understanding of what and why happens next.

As my own example, the first time I did this, I got to: "we're making out in the club", and I was like WTF happens next? So I asked a natural buddy, and he said: "Last time I just told the girl I'd make her a cocktail back at mine".

What did I do? I went out and spent a far too much money on cocktail alcohol and equipment. Next time I went out, I was making out with this girl, and was like: "So, uh, do you want a cocktail back at mine?". Answer: "No". DOH! Asked for more advice on this, was told to make the bounce home gentler and less obvious ... and with time, got that shit sorted. Learning how to bounce was a massive sticking point for me, and I hadn't even realised it - once I had that sorted, I started having a one-night stand. The point being: you won't get this stuff right first time, but a plausible idea of how to go about it is crucial

Do I use some long-winded and complicated extraction technique now? No, of course not. Now I instinctively know how to bounce, instinctively know the subtleties, and tend to just say: "ok, we're out of here!". But the identification of the sticking point through the above exercise (and subsequent ones), the focus on actually closing and getting from A to B is what started accelerating my game.

Key points:

• Write personal, detailed, and fictional descriptions of how you went from seeing a girl to fucking her to help you get the process straight in your head, and identify your weak points
• Ask for advice any time you find yourself having trouble writing plausible dialogue or action sequences
• The point isn't to prescript the interaction, the point is to identify your sticking points in getting from A to B - it won't ever go down the way you planned anyway
• Don't accept wishy-washy advice that doesn't come with plausible detailed examples

Hope this helps - just reading it won't though - actually TRY IT.

-P

Finding Your Identity

From a post on a forum:

Guys I'm having trouble finding out my identity and who I am at my core, I just don't know and it's fucking up my transformation.

How do I establish that connection to my core self, and become in touch with who I am and be creative?

Hey man,

I think you're ultimately going to find the search for your 'identity' a little fruitless...

Your identity is fluid. While it's a sum of your experiences, it's easily and quickly changed. Attaching any meaning to it, especially any moral or social meaning to it is largely pointless. Whatever it is you're trying to find by getting a clear picture of who you are is a wild goose chase.

Maxwell Maltz talks about this in his excellent book Psycho-Cybernetics. Our 'self-concept', our view of our identity is often resistant to evidence, and not based in our actual actions.

Perhaps the closest you'll come if you're determined to chase this down is what Steve Covey calls 'Principles' in the "Seven Habits of Highly Effective People". To elicit them, imagine you attend your funeral. What would you want the people you worked with to say about you? What about your family? Friends? Lovers, past and present? But even these change with time.

Ekhart Tolle would say that your search for a defineable identity is your egoic mind trying to assert its false importance - a concept and set of ideas that escape easy definition, although I found listening to the audio book of "The Power of Now" as I was drifting off to sleep helped me come to profound personal realisations.

Most people, searching for their 'identity' are really trying to find a solid foundation on which to build their self-esteem. Views about themselves which they can present as evidence to their egoic mind for acting in certain ways. TD, in The Blueprint Decoded, talks about feeling like a pimp when you've bought a cool new pair of shoes. Suddenly you feel you look cool, and feel you now 'deserve' to talk to hotter girls.

Building your self-esteem is a wide topic so suffice to say: most people, when searching for their 'identity' are really just searching for a basis for their self-esteem. Your urgency and desire to search for a fixed identity will diminish as your core self-esteem grows.

Searching for your 'identity' is usually how people describe the beginnings of building self-esteem. Finding consistent elements in themselves that they can trust, and that they can present to themselves as evidence of worthiness. For that? Get yourself out and expose yourself to new experiences. But yourself in situations where you're forced to rely on yourself, and trust yourself. Many people find travelling helps

-P

Opening on Public Transport

A lot of what I do these days seems to be mostly instinctual, and I have to work backwards from it to see patterns. Something I realised I've been doing recently to open girls on public transport is a combination of the three-second rule and a few of the principles in Mr M and Braddock's most awesome social circle mastery stuff.

I fly a lot, and living in Thailand, I seem to spend a lot of time on boats and trains. If a chick sits next to me, I'll:

Say something observational and rapport-neutral or rapport-breaking in the first three seconds

I want to get in to a situation where we have SOME dialogue, but I don't wanna be that guy hitting on her as soon as she sits down. It's a bit like touching a girl: you want to start doing it early and often in the interaction, so that there's never an uncomfortable "oh shit, we're getting initimate" moment. If I've not said anything to her, and I've been sitting next to her for ten minutes, it's going to sound a little contrived if I bust out an opinion opener. If we have some traction, it makes it much much easier (from experience).

Real world examples I've closed from:

• You expecting a hurricane or something? (to a girl with a rainsuit on while we're on a boat)
• Christ, that's a big bag. You've got a gun in there? (credit: David D)
• What the fuck is that thing? (some girl with a weird musical instrument on the plane next to me)
• Aww man, I was going to steal your pillow and blanket and make a nest (on the plane)

None of this stuff is needy or rapport-seeking - it's random observations, a little cocky and funny, that don't need a reply beyond her giggling. And that's about as low compliance as you can get.

Shut the fuck up

Now sit back, and do other stuff for a little while. If at all possible, talk to other people around you. Look out the window. Now you've broken the ice, it's not going to look like you were too much of a pussy to talk to her - you're just going to look not needy.

Don't be dogmatic or weird about this. If she continues the conversation, don't run away from that, but: otherwise, put some space in.

Reopen with something situational and rapport building that you can use to DHV

Recent examples I've used:

• On a plane: "I hate flying so much. If I grab on to your arm as we take off, I'd like to apologise now. It's weird you know? I am shit-scared of flying, but I've chosen a job and a lifestyle where I have to fly for about 40 hours every month" - and then I follow this up in to my "doing things that scare you" and "bravery is being the only person who knows you're scared" and "I gave up all my worldy possesions and moved to Thailand" stuff. BOOM: attraction and comfort. This is my standard. I've used this on a ferry too.
  
• On a coach through deepest darkest Thailand: "You heading to Bangkok? Cool. Yeah, I moved there six months ago. Flying back to the UK every month is a drag though" - I bet you can guess where I'm going here.
• On a bus at 2am in London: "Been anywhere nice? Let me guess, you've been to some [teasing coldread here], right?". She asks back, so I say: "Oh, I've been working. I was promoting at [Club X], [Club Y], and [Club Z] tonight, but my subpromoters have the situation nailed, so I'm going home to check my fish are ok...". BOOM: Club promoter at very hot clubs, leader of men, seeding the extraction by talking about something awesome in my house.
  

Obviously, doing this well requires you to actually have some cool shit going on in your life, but I'll take that as a given!

BOOM!

Practical Frame Control

Path to Same-Night Lays: Part 1

As a guy in happily monogamous relationship, I'm not generating any new Lay Reports at the moment. But I've looked back over my 'archive', and found three olds LRs from same-night lays.

Conveniently enough, each seems to have a moral, and a useful teaching point in it. Here's the first, from August '05...

I'm currently working on being able to enjoy nights out without picking up chicks. Not helping this progress is that pretty much all my friends are very natural in their own special ways, so invariably, even if I don't try and pickup, my friends will just get chatting to chicks and need a wing. What's a boy to do?

My friend opens this set who kept looking at him, and so I had to wing, and got chatting to HBPromoter. I'm not consciously trying to run game here, but I notice myself following the process pretty well anyway - at this point, I've internalized a lot of attractive conversational traits, and have a good idea about how I'm meant to be escalating. It took a while, but now I feel I can just relax in to it.

Everything seems to be going well, but I can't get a number from her. It's weird, because it feels ON, but: no number. I even ask why, and get a bullshit answer.

I decide I've had enough of the night, and go and get my jacket to leave, and say goodbye. Half-way out of the club (I could smell the fresh air outside ;-), I suddenly have a hit of reality, and think:

• I was having a good time, but I'm leaving because I'm pissy she won't give me her number
• That's fucking retarded
• I'm getting lots of interest cues from her, even if she won't give me her number - let's see what I can make happen

So I go back, and just completely ignore the fact I'd said goodbye and left, and my wing is cool about not even mentioning this. Club closes. She wants me to look after her and her friend's stuff while she talks to the barman.

ALPHA MALE sense says "don't do it", but luckily, I don't listen to it. I'm trying to get laid here, not try and stroke my ego at the expense of a girl. I'm also starting to realise that a bit of 'supplication', later on in the game, can actually build comfort and trust.

I agree, and stand on the club floor alone for 5 minutes with two handbags, looking like a fucking melon. Then she asks me to walk her home. We get to her house, and I say I want to use the bathroom. She offers me a drink. We chill out, she puts some music on. I'm a little hesitant about physically escalating here, because she's seemed shy, so I turn to plan B: "Man, it's a long way home. Can I crash here?"

She says yes. Lights out in bed, I start making out with her, we have sex for 6 hours (and I turn up for work the next day in my clubbing clothes, stinking of sweat and sex, and end up getting a phone number from the client I had an unexpected meeting with - yikes)

Morals of this story:

• Don't get pissy! Don't get reactive. Keep your goal in mind
• Obsessing about being alpha and high value can be counter-productive. Or rather: is almost always counter-productive later on in the game
• You don't have to mention or explain away 'weird' social behaviour, like coming back after leaving. Just ignore it, plough on.

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How a Shit Memory and Delusional Thoughts Get You Laid

Learning to meet and strike up interesting, attractive conversations with women is a skill.

It’s not hard to find very good clear information about the skills needed - how to build attraction, how to kiss a girl, how to take and follow up a phone number.

But there’s a relative lack of good information on how to actually acquire these skills. Beyond ‘go out and practice’, there’s little solid and practical advice on how to learn and implement them.

So today I’m going to tell you about one particularly useful technique I used.

Focusing on Failure

When asked to name the most useful skill a pass receiver could have, Otto Graham (one of the greatest quarterbacks of all time) said: “A damn short memory”.

What did he mean? He meant the ability to instantly forget about a pass that was badly fumbled. The ability to make a small adjustment, and then let the ‘error’ part of trial and error go, rather than beating yourself up about having made a mistake, or focussing massively on the ‘failure’.

There’s an over-emphasis in The Community on ’sticking points’ - areas where you’re tackling a specific weakness in your skill set. Trying to change specific points is great, but many guys lose sight of the real goal.

Learning to pick up women isn’t about eradicating all the ‘mistakes’ you make - it’s about amplifying everything that you do right. It’s about focusing on the attractive parts of who you are and what you do, not about being endlessly worried about getting some part ‘wrong’.

If a guy’s been playing his failures in his mind over and over again to try and get rid of them, then when he sees the woman of his dreams, what goes through his mind? Is he reminded of his previous successes? Does he get a boost of confidence and self-esteem that’s instantly attractive?

Of course not. His mind dredges up all his blow outs. All the times he was rejected. If he gets the courage to approach at all, he’s nervous, and it shows - what better way to kill attraction?

Making the Glass Delusionally Full

Here’s a simple trick for getting out of this habit. Having tried it, I was blown away by the results.

Every night when I came home after going out to meet women, I’d write an insanely positive entry in my journal. “She punched me and threw a drink over me” became “I had a refreshing time after I spiked a girl’s emotions”. “I kissed a fat girl” became “I ran some really solid comfort and qualifying material on a girl with low self-esteem”.

I simply refused to write down anything negative. If anything I couldn’t spin positively happened, I just wouldn’t write it down.

Why?

Two reasons.

Firstly: it focuses you absolutely on what works. I’d start to see patterns in what I was doing that I hadn’t seen elsewhere. As a joke, I tried to kiss a girl I’d only met 30 seconds previously. It worked. So I tried it again. It didn’t work but got me a positive reaction. Fast escalation thus became part of my arsenal, even though previously I’d always been told it was wrong - apparently it fitted with me, and my personality.

Secondly it builds up all the right and most helpful memories in your head. There’s some pretty compelling evidence now that when your brain retrieves most memories, it deletes the old and creates a new one. If you start to consciously retrieve certain memories, and put a positive spin on them, they start to be remembered that way - as positive times you interacted with women, rather than negative ones.

Keeping focussed on your successes, and not allowing yourself to consciously register ‘failures’ as anything other than signals you might benefit from making a small adjustment will put you on the fast track for getting great results. And what’s more, it’ll help keep the whole process a lot of fun - a vital component in giving you the consistency you need in meeting your goals.

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Don't Get Stuck in Attraction

Just wrote this out on The Attraction Forums in reply to some guy, and thought it might well be worth sharing. DaemonOfDiscord talks about some C&F line he's using, and the responses he's getting:

HB: Nope. I honestly can't tell whether or not I like it better. I'm gonna have to talk to you some more.
Daemon: Sorry, looks like you already got your daily dose of me. I'm out.

This is the first one with the drooling part included.
HB: Huh? Drooling? I'm not drooling!
Daemon: *Stare for like 10 seconds with a confused look*
HB What?
Daemon: Why's your face turning red? Ate something spicy? (Her face wasn't red btw.)
HB: Huh? *Turns around trying to hide her face in embarrassment and starts feeling her face for some reason* (Funny thing is, after I told her that, her face started to turn red and I couldn't hold in my laugh)
Daemon: *Giggle giggle*
HB: Huh? Why you! You made that all up, didn't you!
Daemon: What? *Giggle*What are you talking about? * Giggle* Ask anyone, your face is all *Giggle* red.
HB: *Stops random guy walking our way* Is my face red?
Guy: Yeah, it is. It's really red.
HB: *Shocked*
HB: *Walks away embarrassed*

For the second one, note that it was a tomboy.
HB: Boob job? I am so gonna kick your ass!
Daemon: My bad, my bad!(With hands up) No boob job. Boob jobs make boobs bigger not smaller.
HB: Well, anyway, what .... *Notices the joke, looks down and tries to figure it out*
HB: *raises head* Why you! ... Huh, where'd he go?

This all sounded disastrously familiar to me. He seems to be building attraction, but then ... no escalation!

So, my reply:

A lot of what you're writing above ... it sounds like you're moving further away from, rather than closer to getting with each of these girls.

I remember when I first started going out, I'd just finished reading Double Your Dating, and I'd gotten it in to my head that pickup went something like this:

• Say funny but mean things to a girl
• Repeat
• Girl says "Let's go to my room and have sex"

My wing and I went out and practiced this all the time, and, unfortunately, got some occasional results from it. The Pickup Scientist inside me said "it works, you just have to be EVEN MEANER and EVEN FUNNIER".

Guys who are a little more experienced will probably recognise this situation - it's not where you wanna be at all! You've got to move through the stages of the Emotional Progression Model in a forward direction - you don't have to get a 'perfect score' on each level here...

"HB: Nope. I honestly can't tell whether or not I like it better. I'm gonna have to talk to you some more." -- sounds (from a distance!) like a fairly decent IOI

"HB: Huh? Why you! You made that all up, didn't you!" -- decent IOIs at this point

In both cases you've got IOIs ... and then you or her leaves! DOH. Start to give her small IOIs back at this point - like, ask her a chode question about herself. REWARD her for her IOIs.

Here's something I wrote forever ago, when I realised I was doing EXACTLY what you seem to be doing now:

Last night I went out to one of my favourite clubs - I wasn't out to pick-up, I was out to dance and listen to the music. I was dancing, and this incredibly attractive girl keeps making eye contact with me. I decide to 'play it cool', and keep dancing. After about five minutes, she comes up to me, and dances at me. I decide to keep playing it cool, and basically ignore her. After five minutes, she moves on and dances with someone else, but I'm left feeling great because I rejected her, showing I have high value.

Luckily, that isn't what actually happened: the hero of the story (that'd be me) did get the girl.

But it was going to, until a little alarm bell went off in my head that said "What the fuck are you doing?" And I realised that this is not the first time that I've blatantly ignored very heavy IOIs, and backwards rationalized it as me playing 'hard to get'. I believe that the real cause is rejection fear if I respond to the girl, which is retarded.

I don't really have anything else to add, just that I'm sure that because *I've* done this, so have other people. And that it's taken me this long to realise that I'm doing it is quite sad, and a little worrying. One of the best tips I've had from David DeAngelo's "Interviews with Dating Gurus" was from 'Doc', who basically said "approach attractive girls who give you IOIs" rather than just randomly appraoching. Sounds obvious, but I needed to hear that articulated to realise I wasn't doing that.

If you find yourself ignoring strong IOIs from a girl that you find very attractive, take a step back and make sure that "Your so-called reason is not just a [cowardly] excuse!"

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